Thursday, January 7, 2010

Handmade Recap

This is the point in the year when I would traditionally be doing a rundown of some of the gifts we'd given this year. Sadly, I am about 30% finished with making the damn things, not counting packing and shipping time. Fall really kicked my ass this year, and I vastly overestimated the amount of time I would be able to devote to sitting down and knitting.

Somehow, I thought that two days of driving, in the week before Christmas, would equal two days of solid knitting. Someone hit me in the face please, the next time I start thinking like this. Driving = fetching toys, setting up shows, unwrapping string cheese, calming tears, basically being a one person entertainment troupe, while also struggling to keep my very sleepy husband awake on twisty dark country roads. I think one night I talked for 45 minutes straight about beekeeping- just a monologue, on the last thing I'd happened to be reading about before we got in the car.

Anyway, I did finish a few things, and manage to wrap and gift them.

CAT SHIRT! That's Lyle, my nieces' beloved old kitty. The project is from Bend the Rules of course, and Chase actually did the work of printing it. I just did the transfer onto pajamas. Apparently I am very close to coveted "crazy aunt" status, and this may throw me over the top. My sister-in-law said her older daughter would love it in theory, but might hesitate to wear it outside the house. In the end though, we actually had to insist that she put a coat on over it, before she froze. Hurray! Cat Win!

Grandad got a quick knit tweed scarf, and also membership in the "Pie (or other dessert) of the Month Club. The ladies of the family are pooling our resources, to keep Grandad in pie for 2010. I didn't come up with that, the credit goes to Sarah, but I love it.

I don't have any finished pictures of this finished project. The kids picked leaves from the garden, and we made leaf prints on linen (from old curtains) and I sewed these up into little drawstring produce bags for my dad's garden, a la Betz White. These were fun to do and pretty quick and the kids loved helping Grandad Owl open them up and tell him all about them. I know they'll get a lot of use- my dad is pretty excited about his garden this year.